Info from meeting on Thursday, 13 October

Professor Roundy- Ecology and wilderness land management

Land management is becoming more and more difficult as people move into
wilderness areas. In recent years the patterns of range fires have changed
due to over-management by humans and the importation of new plant species.

For example in the Great Basin area of Utah/Nevada a grass that was brought
over from the Mediterranean. Since this new grass has taken hold, the range
fire frequency has increased from 15-30 years to 3-5 years. The change in
the flora of the area brought on by the new Mediterranean grass is
responsible for this increased frequency.

Another example is that forest fires have become more intense and larger in
recent years. This is in great part due to the overmanagement of forest
lands. In an effort to protect lives and property, the fires are
extinguished too quickly and fuel begins to accumulate. When the fuel has
accumulated, an intense fire begins and cannot be extinguished and burns
uncontrolled.

There is a growing interest in using controlled fires to clear large areas
of wilderness land of accumulated fuel and promote a balanced, diverse
ecosystem. One interesting area of study is researching fire patterns by
studying scorch marks on trees. By examining the rings on trees both living
and dead, researchers can find out how often fires occur in that particular
ecosystem. This gives us direction of how to manage fires as closely as
possible to the area's natural cycle.

The nationl Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research is actually underneath the
football stadium of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Another growing problem in the west is water management. As the population
grows in the arid regions of the west, there are more and more conflicts
over how water rights are divided. Of particular concern is the recent
growth of Las Vegas because the city owns few water shares. They are
looking into alternate ways of acquiring water including underground
resevoirs that are remanants of Lake Bonneville and desalinization of sea
water.

Other interesting things we learned that day:

Scorpions glow under black lights, the reason why is really not understood
although many speculations exist.

We also visited the DNA sequencing lab and learned about the process of
analyzing DNA samples.